


A similar confusion

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s01e11 Rôti, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Someone Helps Will Graham, episode rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 02:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16925187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Abel Gideon becomes concerned when a delirious special agent shows up in the back of his car. Maybe it's the Ripper's urge to meddle, maybe it's the surgeon in him, but for some reason he can't let it go.





	A similar confusion

The last time Abel Gideon saw Will Graham, he looked very different.

He’d been wearing similar clothes, of course, and his hair hadn’t changed. But then he’d been calm and collected, asking carefully targeted questions with analytical eyes. He’d been very much the investigator. He’d probed Gideon’s mind a bit, but not in the way Gideon minded—he’d only wanted to see and understand, not move things around, not make a fucking thesis statement. And he’d really been much more interested in the Chesapeake Ripper, and he hadn’t thought for a moment Gideon was him.

If anything, Gideon appreciated that kind of certainty.

Now, he was half wondering what the source of it might have been. Of course, he’d heard Lounds’ sensationalist take on Will Graham, but… “I was expecting the Chesapeake Ripper,” he said. “Unless you are he?”

Graham didn’t answer. But while he didn’t look like the collected investigator anymore, he looked much less like a Ripper. Not that Gideon knew what the Ripper looked like, he bitterly thought, but at least the Ripper was deliberate. He knew his mind. Graham, right now…

“You don’t look well, Mr. Graham,” he said.

Graham didn’t react. He had a gun leveled at Gideon’s face, and yet it seemed almost fatalistically impersonal.

“I may be crazy, but you seem ill.”

Graham finally spoke. One word. “Drive.”

Well, it wasn’t “ _You are under arrest_.” But Gideon frowned as he put his foot down on the gas. “Who’s your doctor?” Graham seemed to be on some kind of mission right now. But a man in that state belonged nowhere but the hospital.

Gideon wasn’t sure exactly what he was or who, but in the past he’d been a good surgeon, and he knew a sick man when he saw one.

Graham gave him directions. His voice was dead—toneless, it didn’t even waver. He wasn’t sending Gideon towards the police department, though. They headed along back roads, as if Graham were just as afraid of discovery as Gideon. Perhaps more so.

They arrived at a lovely house, a large one. Graham climbed out of the car and commanded Gideon to walk. With him that unsteady, Gideon could easily attack him, take the gun, snap his neck, cut his throat. Easily. He didn’t bother trying. There would have been no sweetness to it.

Was going along with a mad man’s orders something the Ripper would do? Would he bide his time? Would he find this kind of conduct rude?

They walked down the path. Graham said, “The bell.” Gideon rang it.

A tall man opened the door. He scanned the two of them impassively, then waved them in. The gun didn’t seem to bother him much. They went to the dining room.

The man spoke. “Your name is Will Graham.” Psychiatrist speak, affirmation. “You—”

“I don’t care who I am,” Graham burst out. It was more emotion than he’d shown the entire drive. He gestured with his shaky gun hand at Gideon, who was settled in a chair. “Just tell me if he’s real!”

Gideon had questioned his identity time and time again in the past months, but never his own reality.

The tall man leaned forward slightly. He looked Gideon in the eyes, expressionless. “What do you think you see?”

“Garrett Jacob Hobbs.”

Gideon knew the name. After all, he read Lounds’ articles. He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered to play the role of Graham’s nightmare, or insulted to have a dead man superimposed on his face. He might think he was the Chesapeake Ripper, but Garrett Jacob Hobbs he was not.

That was something he knew.

The tall man looked Gideon in the eyes again. Then he turned to Graham, gravely. The trustworthy psychiatrist would tell Graham the truth, dispel the illusion Graham had cast over Gideon. Then what? Throw Gideon in irons. As if he could—

“Will, there is no one there.”

Gideon’s thoughts froze.

Graham looked at him wildly. Maybe he thought Gideon was a dead man but for just a second a thought crossed between the two of them in a gaze—No, no, no, that can’t be…

“Don’t lie to me.” Will’s body jerked. The tall man took him by the shoulders. “He’s there, he’s right there…”

“There is no one.”

 _Why_ , Gideon thought, _do we still trust psychiatrists? I believed him too. And you believe him—even though you’re shaking your head, you believe him—he will destroy you, and we are both foolish enough_ …

“Give me the gun, Will.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Will’s jitters were resolute. “Don’t, don’t…”

His voice faded out as his body shuddered. The man eased the gun out of his hand and placed it on the mantelpiece. He gently tilted Will’s head back, felt his neck, examined his eyes, which seemed to have rolled back in his head. He looked as Gideon imagined he had looked after a round of drugs and Chilton messing with his brain, with his physiology, with every aspect of his being.

The tall man stepped away. “He’s had a mild seizure.” He picked up the gun.

“You don’t seem concerned.”

The tall man looked at him sharply, reprovingly. “I said it was mild.”

Of course, of course. Wrong of Gideon not to trust the psychiatrist to know his patient. He would destroy Will’s sense of reality, seemed to be doing so already, but of course he would never lack the proper amount of concern, never allow his patient to play out too far beyond his reach…

“You are the man who thinks he is the Chesapeake Ripper.”

Thinks. Gideon’s mind, which has already been clinking along faster than usual, finds another connection. Thinks, thinks. This man was like Will—he knew Gideon wasn’t the Ripper really. How did he know that?

* * *

He knew better than to trust a psychiatrist. But when the man, the doctor, gave Gideon an address and a mission, he took it and ran. He was the Chesapeake Ripper, right? Even if he wouldn’t say it. He had to be. Gideon would stake his identity on that. It wasn’t even that big of a risk to take.

Part of him would rather have killed the doctor. But the doctor had a gun, and he wasn’t afraid of Gideon, and he reminded Gideon of days spent strapped on a table while a confident Chilton loomed over him. He’d taken power back from Chilton, but he couldn’t get rid of the part of himself that was the victim. He couldn’t face a man like that.

Kill Alana Bloom. Yes, kill her. She hadn’t been that bad, really. But she was a doctor, and she had probed. Kill her, and then he’d be done. Would the Ripper think he had done a good job?

The Ripper, who was more obsessed with Will Graham. A man careless with his toys yet convinced he was taking good care of them, watching them closely. He was not the godlike figure Gideon had pictured, if Gideon was even right about who he was…

He stood outside Alana Bloom’s house. To kill or not to kill? Would the old Abel Gideon, the surgeon, the husband, have done it? Would the Ripper do it, at the suggestion of another? Was the Ripper working in him now?

He was waiting for something. When he heard the footsteps in the snow behind him, stumbling and weary, he knew what.

Will Graham was back. Loosed by his psychiatrist, sent on the warpath. The good doctor wanted to see which mad man would win. Will had a gun and a moral compass. Gideon still had most of his brain and good health.

“You’re not well,” he repeated as Will sidled up next to him, panting. “Mr. Graham.”

Will didn’t answer.

“We’re the same, the pair of us. You came for her too, right?” It didn’t matter whether Will was here to save or kill. Both of them compelled by the normal, its siren call unobtainable. “But we can’t…” How to put it. How to put it. “We’re the kind of men who can’t be in relationships,” he said with a huff. “Already stuck in our own heads.”

“I want to get out,” Will said.

He was tired.

“We can’t always get what we want,” Gideon said quietly.

Will nodded, accepting the words as truth. Then he crumpled and collapsed in the snow.

Gideon looked down at him. Huh. The doctor, the Ripper, had pushed his toy a little too hard. Probably hadn’t predicted it would break down so easily. He looked down the hill at Dr. Alana Bloom, bustling about her kitchen. Will had come here for her. But if Gideon left, she wouldn’t save him, probably wouldn’t even notice he was there. She would leave him out here to die in the snow…or get him to the hospital, but sooner or later give him back to the Ripper’s ministrations.

He sighed.

The Ripper would play with Graham’s mind, rearrange him, make him art. Finding an enemy in the snow, he would leave him or kill him, and probably the latter. He did value Graham, of course. Gideon had seen that firsthand—assuming, assuming…

But that was what the Ripper would do. What would Abel Gideon do?

Gideon the poor husband, who never paid his wife enough attention. Gideon the surgeon who always tried to save lives.

He wasn’t that man anymore, whoever that man had been. But maybe as Will said, it didn’t matter who they were. They needed to get out of their heads if they were going to live. And Gideon needed to get over his identity crisis for a minute or two and think about something that wasn’t him.

He bent down and heaved Will out of the snow and onto his back. The agent’s car was not so far away. He walked away from Alana Bloom, carrying Will along with him.

Whatever siren call she’d sung tonight, neither of them would be listening.

* * *

He didn’t know exactly what was wrong with Will Graham. It couldn’t be all mental, even if a lot of it stemmed from the good doctor. Something physical there too…Gideon wished he had his equipment, a hospital, the help of several competent nurses and maybe a brain scan. But for now he’d have to make do with the obvious: A fever, because Will Graham was burning up.

Probably an infection.

He wasn’t sure where to bring them. His own hideout was busted now…Couldn’t just keep driving. And Will needed a bed. And he wasn’t taking him to a hospital. For some reason his mind was made up about that.

An idea occurred to him that he rather liked. There had been one or two more doctors on his list from way back, doctors he hadn’t thought the FBI would have in protective custody. One lived nearby. He drove there, parked. Looked over at Will, still unconscious in the passenger seat. Still burning up.

He put a hand on his forehead. “Don’t worry, Mr. Graham. I’ll take care of you.” Only, what if Will woke up and ran off? He’d clearly recovered from a bad state at the doctor’s house, so he was capable. Gideon frowned. He fiddled around in Will’s pockets and located handcuffs. FBI agents were useful that way, at least. They all had handcuffs and a gun.

He handcuffed Will to the door. There. No running off and getting himself hit by a car or anything. Gideon left the car running for heat. He wouldn’t be gone long enough to worry about gas fumes.

He rang the doorbell. The doctor answered—Dr. Cronin, his name was, Gideon remembered him well—and Gideon shot him where he stood. Bang. Done.

The Ripper would have made a performance out of it, even pressed for time.

“Well, fuck him,” Gideon muttered. It was the Ripper’s mess he was cleaning up after.

The doctor wasn’t quite dead—he was still making gurgling sounds—but it was close enough. Gideon stomped on his face for spite’s sake and went back to the car. Of course Will hadn’t moved. The handcuffs might have been unnecessary.

Gideon released the handcuffs and manhandled him out. Into the house. The bedroom turned out to be on the top floor, but Gideon wasn’t going to settle for dumping Will on a couch. Since apparently he’d taken back his vocation of doctor, he was going to do it right. He settled Will in the bed, then headed downstairs. He still needed to pull Dr. Cronin inside—the body was currently keeping the front door wedged open, letting all the cold air in.

This being a doctor’s house was ideal, really. He had certain supplies here. More powerful fever reducers and antibiotics than the pathetic bottle of aspirin Gideon had found in Will’s pocket, for one. And with Cronin’s supplies and Gideon’s own supplies, Gideon could start a saline drip. Will was very dehydrated, but too deeply out of it to drink…

Gideon bustled around with one thing and another. It was a bit invigorating to have a patient again. He only paused when, after considerable effort, he had brought Will’s fever down a few degrees. What was he doing?

He hated doctors, yet he so much enjoyed being one. Playing God.

Was this the Ripper in him? Was that why he wanted to do this?

Was it a better instinct?

Had those psychiatrists, too…

No. He shut himself firmly to guilt. He was crazy, after all. It was no use feeling bad about the things he’d done—even Dr. Chilton hadn’t really blamed _him_ for it. And he’d even held back from killing Dr. Bloom—Will would be happy about that when he woke up…and he would wake up now, Gideon had made sure of that.

He put a hand on Will’s forehead again, less feeling his temperature than feeling his skin, asserting his reality.

“You’re Will Graham,” he said out loud. “You are in Dr. Cronin’s house. You are in my hands.” He checked the clock. “And the time is…good Lord, is it that late? I guess I should say early.”

The moment was broken. He could talk like the Ripper but it wasn’t really him. Frankly, he could never be either that assuring or that chilling. He wasn’t the Ripper. He knew it, suddenly and completely, and it flooded him with relief.

“ _You’ve_ said this all along, haven’t you?” he said to Will. No response. “Well. Thank you.”

So late. He needed rest himself. He handcuffed Will to the headboard of this bed just in case he didn’t wake up fast enough, then ambled to the guest room next door. He left both doors open so he would hear Will if he called out for help. He was on duty, after all, and he was a good doctor, or at least not a slacker.

* * *

Agent Graham was not exactly lucid the next morning, but he was clear-headed enough to tell, despite a lingering fever, that Abel Gideon was not Garrett Jacob Hobbs or nonexistent, and was, in fact, Abel Gideon.

And a serial killer.

Yet he seemed almost more amused than unnerved. “Are you trying to go back to your roots?” he huffed.

“What’s that, Mr. Graham?”

Will pushed back his sweaty hair with the hand Gideon hadn’t handcuffed. “You’ve decided you’re not the Ripper. The Ripper didn’t show up, he let you down. So now you’ve decided to explore the other option, the man you used to be. The surgeon. Well, you somewhat explored that already…” The hand went to Will’s gut, and he flinched back, expression changing into something more fearful, less aware. “…gonna carve me up?”

Gideon checked Will’s temperature. “No, I don’t think so. Calm down, Mr. Graham. I’m being a good doctor. Like you said, my roots.” He tilted his head. “I suppose you’re a decent profiler.”

“You’ll get in my head,” Will said. His eyes had gone hazy.

Gideon said, “No, Mr. Graham. I’m not the Ripper.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “By the way, what did you say your doctor’s name was?”

“I’m not telling you anything…get in my head…”

Gideon sighed. He could find out later. “I think you’re ready to hold down water. Just a moment. Please stay where you are.”

He fetched a glass. Will drank well enough, and as he swallowed, he gave Gideon a more solid look.

“You kidnapped me.”

“To be fair, you didn’t leave me much of a choice.”

Will frowned. “What happened last night?”

“You trust me to tell you?”

“You wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Because I’m a doctor?”

“Because you care about me. In a way. You see yourself in me, just like I see myself in you. You could kill me, probably. You haven’t yet decided you won’t. But you won’t lie to me. Will you?”

Gideon said, “I won’t.” He folded his hands. “Last night you chased me to Dr. Bloom’s house with a gun. You collapsed before you could kill me. I took you here.”

There was a long moment before the words processed and Will’s eyes widened. “Dr. Bloom. Did you kill Dr. Bloom?”

“Didn’t exactly have the time. I did kill the man who owns this house, but honestly, he had it coming. Psychiatrists.” Gideon huffed. “Can’t live with them…”

Will did not have anything to say about Gideon’s most recent murder. He stared off into the distance.

“You said you see yourself in me,” Gideon said.

“You already knew that. We’re both…” Will shrugged. With a pained smile, he said, “The kindest word would be confused.”

“Do you think we’ll figure it out?”

“I have a paddle,” Will said.

Gideon rolled his eyes. “I’m going to get your medication. Stay right here.”

This time, Will got the joke—he couldn’t exactly leave. He didn’t laugh, but his lips twitched.

And when Gideon gave him the pills, he swallowed them dutifully and without protest. The trust he claimed to have was real then. Which made it worse that Gideon wasn’t telling him the truth, not the full truth.

Someone needed to tell him to steer clear of that doctor. Someone needed to tell him he was being played. But who would believe it from Gideon? Gideon was basically famous at this point for being obsessed with the evils of psychiatry, and although he really did think the majority of psychiatrists were better off dead, the Ripper was much worse than most. He would destroy Will. And Gideon could warn him, and he wasn’t doing it.

There was the simplest road, of course. One very sure way to protect Will from the Ripper, save the fainting damsel from the beast. Only it wasn’t something Gideon was all that certain he could accomplish.

All day he thought about it. His pensiveness made Will tense.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Just my perpetual identity crisis, as you know.”

“No. No, it’s something new. That makes you miserable, this makes you…you feel righteous but nervous.” Will’s hands twitched. “What are you thinking about?”

“You can’t tell, profiler?”

Will rubbed a hand on his forehead. “No. But since you’re keeping so quiet about it, it’s something I wouldn’t like. But it’s not killing me, you wouldn’t bother keeping that a secret, you never do…” Twitch, twitch. “Whatever it is, it’s a bad idea. Don’t do it.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a pretty good idea.”

This made Will actively angry, and he tried, and failed, to sit up. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Don’t worry about me, Mr. Graham. I won’t kill anyone who doesn’t have it coming.”

Will’s eyes narrowed. “If you go after Dr. Bloom again, I will kill you.”

Gideon considered it, then laughed. “Nah. I’m after bigger fish now.”

It was getting late. Time to head out, but it wasn’t good policy to leave a patient alone…he fetched a last dose of pills—antibiotics, fever reducers—and this time included a sleeping pill. Will trustingly swallowed it down with the rest.

But, even when he was asleep, he tossed and turned. He was soaked in sweat, too. A good doctor would have gotten him into other clothes earlier. But Gideon, though he would do in a pinch, was no longer a certified doctor.

He left in Dr. Cronin’s car.

* * *

The Ripper was impassive when he opened the door. The gun trembled in Gideon’s hands. He’d pictured a replay of Cronin: Open the door, bang, done. But.

He couldn’t.

The Ripper led him into the dining room, where they’d last conversed. He said, “You’ve taken my patient.”

“You mean Mr. Graham?”

“Is he dead?”

Gideon smiled. “Do you want him to be?”

“Of course not,” The Ripper said smoothly. “He is my patient.”

“So you sent him half-conscious after a serial killing madman…for his health,” Gideon said.

The Ripper tilted his head. “Ah. You did not kill him after all. I am surprised, Dr. Gideon. You have hidden depths.”

“I wasn’t sure whether you would have or not,” Gideon said. “Would you?”

The Ripper shrugged. “Speculation is pointless. You are you, I am me. Have you learned that lesson yet?”

Yes.

Gideon raised the gun. _Bang, done_ , he thought. But he couldn’t pull the trigger. And as he hesitated, the Ripper did not. A knife snatched out of a knife holder, then sunk into his side…

He shot on instinct, and from there the struggle became a blood-smudged haze. His one real encounter with the Ripper, and later on, he would remember it less clearly than the false memories Chilton had implanted.

* * *

Maybe he was lucky nonetheless, to have encountered the Ripper and survived. Though it landed him first in the hospital and then back in lockup. He decided to say it was on account of heroism that he’d landed here, on the behalf of Will Graham. He told anyone who asked that the good doctor—apparently named Dr. Lecter—was at the very least a fucked up guy who liked messing with his patients’ minds and had caused Graham’s sickness on purpose, and quite possibly worse. The officers interrogating him took notes, but he knew they were notes on his psyche, not on Lecter being a possible threat.

Lecter had lived, unfortunately. That much he could gather from the interrogation, although they refused to give him details. Judging by the fact that no one was asking where Will Graham was, Will must have lived and gotten free too. He was a FBI agent. Doubtless he knew how to get out of handcuffs, and could manage himself well enough when he wasn’t too sick to stand up.

Gideon wondered if he’d come to visit. Maybe now he could give his warning, since his attempt at a rescue had failed so horribly. But it was all too late. The next he heard of Mr. Graham was that he was being interred in the same asylum as he.

He heard it from Chilton, which rubbed it in harder. Really he hadn’t thought Chilton would survive. That was the greatest disappointment.

“You and Will Graham spent some time together, didn’t you?” Chilton asked. Already back to his pedestal of superiority even though Gideon’s hands had been in his gut.

“A day or so, yes. I can’t say we’re exactly bosom friends.”

“Very interesting. Perhaps I can schedule you for joint therapy. Did you know he was a killer at the time? Is that why you tried to nurse him back to health?”

Gideon wasn’t in the least convinced he was now. Though it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, he knew a psychiatrist’s work when he saw it. But he just smiled and said, “No. It was an altruistic act.”

Chilton smiled back, smug as a peacock. “Well, I wonder…”

So they’d be seeing each other eventually. Gideon felt the vague urge to apologize. He’d managed to kill so many psychiatrists and failed to kill the two worst: His own demon and Will’s. So they were both damned. Though at least, it occurred to him, Will might now be inclined to listen, and Gideon could finally tell him the whole truth.


End file.
